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Caught

Lauren was
nervous and it showed. In fact, it radiated from her body and made her two
young children so agitated and restless that one hour after their bed time they
were still like jack-in-the boxes refusing all of her attempts to get them into
bed.

“But Mommy …”
they protested as she insisted that it was too late for another bedtime story.
Usually it was never too late for a book on the weekend, but tonight was
different. She needed them in bed and fast asleep so that she would have time
to prepare the house and herself for her visitor. She kissed the children good
night, turned on the fan and started to leave.

“When is Daddy
coming back?” her daughter asked, her voice full of longing. Lauren felt a stab
of guilt and wished that she still felt that desire to have her husband home.

“He’ll be back
from his trip in two days, honey, and I promise to read to you tomorrow,” she
responded over her shoulder as she closed their door and headed to her
bathroom.

She sat on the
toilet and dropped her head into her hands.

“Don’t cry, don’t
cry” she muttered to herself over and over. The last thing she needed tonight
was to think about John. She thought of the parting shot that he gave before
leaving for this trip three weeks ago. She had been pleading with him to
explain why he was so distant. He had given a sigh of gentle exasperation and
spoke as one would speak to a persistent child.

“You are overreacting.
We’ve just grown apart. It happens. We have to stay together for the congregation
… and the children,” he added almost like a footnote. “If we give each other
the space we need, we can both be happy.”

Lauren stood
under the shower and let the pain that his coolness caused her wash over her
and down the drain. The pain was replaced by anger and she recalled the promise
she made to herself to follow his suggestion and find her own pleasure as she
saw fit.

After her shower,
she stood in front of her full length mirror and examined her body critically. The
toll of two pregnancies showed in her sagging breasts and the folds and stretch
marks on her stomach. She had always been proud of maintaining her weight, but tonight
she noticed every bump and spot. They revealed the wear and tear of the passing
years on her body.

‘No longer the
body of a teenager,’ she thought with a sigh, ‘but it’ll have to do.’

She sprayed
herself with perfume and smothered her brown skin with cream until it shone.
She appraised herself again, spinning around and looking over her shoulder.

‘Not TOO bad,’
she thought, ‘At least the gym is beginning to pay off … in more ways than one!’

She looked
through her closet for something to wear. Everything looked old and frumpy. Finally
she settled on a girlish dress that fitted at the waist and flared, falling
just above her knees. It accentuated her legs, her best asset; the only part of
her body that was unmarked by the passage of time.

They had agreed
that she would leave the garden gate unlocked so she would not be seen letting
him in. The gate and the front door, actually, so that he could enter
surreptitiously. Although the house was on a half acre of land and quite far
away from their nearest neighbour, she could not take the chance of a passerby
seeing her letting a man into her house so late at night, especially when the
man was not her husband.

She was now as
giddy as a school girl on a first date. She walked down the hallway to the
children’s bedroom. She opened the door quietly and peaked in. They were finally
fast asleep. She kissed them and neither of them stirred. She closed the door
and headed out of the bedroom area into the kitchen. She opened a cupboard and
reached for some candles. The bottle of salt toppled over.

“Oh shoot!” she
said softly, and without thinking she grabbed the broom and started to sweep. “Oh
shoot!” she said again.

Her grandmother
had always warned her never to sweep at night. “Bad luck,” she would say
shaking her head, “very bad luck. You might as well break a mirror, instead.”
It was one of many superstitions that her Trinidadian grandmother had drummed
into her head as a child. Sometimes she found it hard to completely disregard
them.

“I guess now I’m
supposed to throw a bit of salt over my shoulder for luck,” she said out loud
with a laugh, finishing the clean up job quickly.

She heard the sound
of a car approaching slowly. Her heart rate quickened with anticipation, but
the car continued past her house. She sat in the living room and contemplated
having a drink of wine to calm her nerves. She had never done anything like
this before. She had never even been touched by any man except her husband. But
it had been a long time since he had touched her with love. She tried to
believe that somewhere inside the reticent soul he had become, he still loved
her, but she could no longer reach him and it was not enough to live with a
memory of what their life had once been. When she met Mike at the gym it had
been like a breath of fresh air. Although he was almost 15 years younger than
she was, he looked at her the way her husband did when they first met.

She knew that she
was being naïve, but she felt young and desirable when he spoke to her. When
they first met, she had convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with a
little flirting. The attention was fun, especially from a dark, handsome and very
muscular man. He had asked her for advice on his plans to open his own gym and
so she met him for a drink to discuss the prospects. They did not talk business
at all on that first date. They watched the sunset at a bar overlooking the sea
and Lauren talked about herself and her life as the wife of a prominent clergyman.
She enjoyed being in the spot light for a change.

One harmless
meeting over drinks after the gym turned into two, three and then four. When he
spoke, which was usually only to ask her a probing question about her life, she
was caught up in the sensuous movement of his full, almost feminine lips. The
last time they met, he had leaned over questioningly pursing those lips in her
direction and she had responded in kind. After all, it was just one kiss. But
when his lips touched hers, she knew that it would not stop there. The passion
that rose in her was immediate and tremendous. There was a physical movement in
her loins.

‘Loins … do
people still use that word?’ she wondered, laughing at herself.

So, here she was
risking everything to get closer to that feeling that would make her feel like
a complete woman once more; that feeling of being irresistible to a special
man.

She tried to
anticipate what it would be like once he arrived. She would invite him to sit
on the couch. Hopefully she wouldn’t be
too nervous. She would offer him some wine to lighten the mood. She wondered if
he would make the first move and how she would respond.

She heard a soft
knock and then the door opened. Mike stepped in.

“Lauren! Wow!” he
exclaimed, “you look …. you look fantastic.”

She took in his appearance.
He had chosen a dark red fitted t-shirt, which went well with his dark skin and
really accentuated the muscular physique of his arms and his six-pack abdominals,
which Lauren could just barely discern where his shirt was pulled taut, tucked into
his black jeans.

Before she could
respond to his greeting, before she could execute the script she had planned, he
walked over to her, took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, roughly. He
was only a few inches taller than she was and their bodies fit together
comfortably just as Lauren had imagined the few times that she had allowed
herself to picture herself in Mike’s arms. His hands moved on her body, starting
at her back and then drifting downwards, caressing her legs and raising her
skirt. With one arm around her waist, his mouth still on hers, he turned her
around and led her towards the couch.

Lauren didn’t
know how to respond. She enjoyed the kiss at first, savoring the passionate
embrace with her eyes tightly shut, but when his hands began to roam, she
thought, ‘This is going too fast.’

She opened her
eyes and almost bit Mike’s lip as she screamed in horror.

There was another
man was in the room. He was standing in front of her. He must have come in
behind Mike, but the couple, locked in their passionate embrace, had neither heard
the door nor noticed his arrival. He wore a ski mask and his clothing was black
except that his shirt had a white collar that reminded Lauren of a priest.

He looked at
Lauren with bemused eyes. He put a finger to his lips and pointed downwards.
Lauren’s eyes followed his finger and she realized that he was pointing a gun
at Mike’s back. She barely stifled another scream.

The man spoke.
“Put your hands where I can see them.”

Lauren took a
step back from Mike and raised her hands in the air.

“Both of you,”
the man ordered.

Mike, who had
stepped away from Lauren’s embrace but still faced her, turned around slowly,
raising his hands above his head.

“Now lady,
where’s the safe,” the burglar continued.

“We don’t have a
safe,” Lauren replied, “we don’t keep any money in the house. I’ll give you
what I have in my purse, just please, please,” she begged, “leave us alone.”

“Don’t lie to
me,” the man shouted, “I know you must have a safe in the house.”

He took one step
closer to Lauren. His eyes, no longer smiling, bore steadily and menacingly
into hers. “Now where is it?” he growled.

Lauren wondered
how he was so sure about the safe. They had only just had it installed and she
had not really discussed it with many people. Her husband had recently developed an
eccentric distrust of banks and insisted on having a safe at home.She had mentioned
it to Mike because she had had to miss the gym on the day that it was installed
and they had laughed about the absurdity of the idea that their cash would be
safer at home than in the bank. She glanced over at her intended lover.

The intruder
followed her gaze and said “Hmmm, come to think of it, this guy doesn’t look
like the Reverend Martin I’ve seen on the TV. What exactly is going on here?”

“Just take what
you want and get out,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, I’ll take
what I want,” he replied, leering at her. “Tonight and any other night I come
back. Or I’ll tell the good Reverend your dirty little secret. A preacher’s
wife;” he continued, “you all are the worst; living this sham pious life,
getting rich from poor people's donations. You build fancy buildings, travel
all over the world while the poor in your congregation go home to their
suffering every Sunday, feeling like they must be sinners when in fact they are the saints. Well, it's time now
for you to suffer.”

He grabbed Lauren
by the hand and pulled her roughly towards his chest. He held her in his arms.

Lauren tried to
focus on the problem and ignore the fear that threatened to paralyse her. She
stood trembling in his arms for a moment, ideas racing through her head. It was
two of them against one. If she could distract the intruder, Mike should be
able to overpower him.

She stomped hard
on his left foot. With only a second’s pause, she raised her right foot to knee
him in the groin. Then she snapped her hands out sharply, freeing herself from
his grasp and knocking the gun out of his hands.

She wondered if
Mike was in shock. He just stood there watching the drama unfold.

“Get the gun,
Mike, get the gun!” she cried, pulling the ski mask off of the intruder’s face
as he bent over, groaning and holding his groin. She looked at him and thought
that his face looked quite familiar.

Mike ran to where
the gun had fallen and picked it up. The intruder straightened up slowly and laughed.

“Good moves lady,”
he said, “but you made one miscalculation. Tell her Mike.”

“I’m sorry,
Lauren, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.” Mike said, pointing the gun at
Lauren. Her mouth dropped open in disbelief.

“Yes, Lauren,”
the intruder said mockingly, “lover boy here set you up. But he misjudged YOU.
We never thought you’d put up a fight.”

“You set me up?”
Lauren said to Mike, her eyes filling with angry tears. “You know this man?”

“He’s my
brother,” Mike said. Then he continued softly “Lauren, I thought he would just
rob you all and leave. You’re a nice lady, so quiet and all, I thought it would
just be easy and no one would get hurt. I wouldn't have gone along with it if I
thought he meant to hurt you,” Mike glanced at his brother.

Lauren looked
from one to the other and realized why the intruder looked familiar. He and Mike
had the same short curly hair and the sensuous lips that had attracted her to
Mike in the first place. Ignoring the gun in Mike’s hand, Lauren strode over to
him and slapped him hard across the face.

“You worm!” she
hissed, “How could you betray me?” She dropped her head to her hands. She could
not believe she had let herself believe that a 20-something year old could find
her irresistible. Now she had betrayed her husband and even worse, her own
principles. She thought of the spilled salt. Her grandma had been right; sweeping
in the night was bad, bad luck.

“Mommy?” a sleepy
voice came from the end of the room. All three adults snapped their heads in
the direction of the voice and saw Lauren’s 6 year old son standing in the
entrance to the living room, rubbing his eyes with one hand and clutching a
teddy bear in the other.

Lauren took
advantage of the distraction and with a quick front kick she knocked the gun from
Mike’s hand. She dove for it and pointed it at the two men.

The little boy
began to cry.

“Don’t cry, darling.”
Lauren said as soothingly as she could with a gun in her hands. “Mommy needs
you to be a really brave boy. Go to the kitchen phone and call 9-1-1 just like
I taught you. Tell the police there are some bad guys in our house.”

The boy ran quickly
into the kitchen.

“You idiot!” the
intruder exploded, “How could you let her get the gun!”

“I was an idiot
to go along with this scheme in the first place,” Mike replied.

“Well, you can't
back out now. We are in this together, all three of us.”

Mike’s brother
took a step towards Lauren, looking her straight in the eyes once more.

The man took
another step forward, his hand outstretched towards the gun. He jumped back as a
loud noise reverberated in the room. Lauren had aimed just to the right of his
leg and fired into the floor.

“I was training to enter the defence force when I met my husband. I see that Mike forgot to tell you that bit of information. Some things you don’t forget. Rest assured, next time I won't miss,” Lauren added.

He raised his
hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay,” he said to Lauren and then to his brother
he said, “Mike, you would hook up
with a crazy woman.”

Lauren’s son came
back to the door. He was really crying now. “Mommy? Mommy? I called the police.”

Lauren answered
without taking her eyes off of the two men. “You did great, honey. Daddy will
be so proud. Now go wait in your room, Mommy’ll be right there.”

She pointed to her son and continued, “And I won't make James lie about what he saw here tonight.”

The four of them stood still for a few seconds, each contemplating their next move. Mike's brother darted suddenly in the direction of the living room door. Lauren guessed that he planned to grab James and use him as a shield from the gun.

“Don't move!” she shouted.

She aimed the gun at his arm and squeezed the trigger again. He kept moving and the bullet hit him in his chest. He stopped mid-stride and clutched his chest. His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor.
James, Lauren's son screamed as the man fell bleeding near his feet. Mike ran to his brother's side.

"Marcus!" he cried. He held his brother in his arms.

“Marcus!” he cried out again. He looked up at Lauren.

"What have you done? My God, what have you done?"
Lauren did not move. She knew she should comfort her son or try to help Mike's brother but her body would not respond to her commands. All she could do was to stand staring at the injured man with tears streaming down her cheeks.

The sound of the sirens was now much closer. Mike looked up towards the door as if he was hearing the noise for the first time. He looked down at his brother, gently closed his eyes, jumped up and ran for the door. He opened it and escaped into the bushes just as the police cars pulled up.

Lauren heard the police approaching the open door. They stepped inside and immediately took in the scene; the gun in Lauren’s hands and the man lying on the ground bleeding. One of the officers pulled out his radio.

“Send over an ambulance. Gunshot victim at 623 Seabreeze Lane.” She paused, then continued, “Yes, the Reverend Martin’s house.”

The other officer had knelt down and felt Marcus’ body for a pulse. He said to his partner.

“They don’t need to hurry, I think we’ve lost this one.”

He looked up at Lauren. “Mrs. Martin, are you okay? Can you tell me what happened here?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

The officer stood next to her and said, “Take your time and start at the beginning.”

Lauren’s head felt like it was spinning. The beginning? She did not know where this story really started? With Marcus’ entrance into the house? Or were the seeds of this disaster planted with her first thought of deceiving her husband?

She sank slowly to her knees and hugged her son tightly to her chest. Wherever the story started, it was going to take a lot of work to get to a happy ending.